1.11.2010

As the Worldwake spoiler well has run bone dry, we have to wait until the official Wizards previews begin next week. With this time we thought we might as well revisit that new Worldwake Elf Lord Joraga Warcaller as we have been giving it some thought as to how it may impact the casual standard Magic the Gathering environment.

One choice that has been yattered about is to slide this very excellent new card into a modified 'Eldrazi Green' deck. If you are not aware, 'Eldrazi Green' has not only been seeing some popular casual play but also has been venturing into some tournament play as well.

Here are some of the typical existing cards one would see in these decks . . .Artifact : Eldrazi Monument

Right off the hop, we see that Eldrazi Monument really shines in a deck that consistently pukes tokens out each turn but starts to loose its appeal as we do not have anything (yet!) that produces Elf tokens. We are unsure whether there will be such an Elf token generator in the rest of Worldwake but for the moment, it appears we have a road block - that is unless you play extended with the likes of Elvish Promenade, Imperious Perfect, etc.

You may not want a full deck set of Eldrazi Monument, but certainly will want to keep Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Nissa's Chosen and Nissa Revane. After this, a careful selection of other Elves are in order - perhaps you even want to consider introducing a cascade mechanic with Bloodbraid Elf.~A quick reference for Joraga

Joraga Warcaller, (Rare)Creature - Elf WarriorMultikicker 1 (You may pay an additional {1} as you play this spell as many times as you choose.)Joraga Warcaller enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked.Other Elf creatures you control get +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on Joraga Warcaller.1/1

~

Wherever you pilot this deck, you will most likely want to try to dump as many +1/+1 counters on Joraga Warcaller as possible. Your choices are Sigil Captain, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, Ajani Goldmane and Quest for the Gemblades and even Blade of the Bloodchief. Perhaps you may not even want to multikick this card when you play it put hold onto some extra mana in the event that your opponent will want to kill it as soon as it enters the battlefield. We suggest that you at least one green mana for Vines of Vastwood which may work in your favour.

We are unsure that we will see some other lovely Worldwake cards coming out to support this but we do know that wherever the chips will fall, you will have some fun building a deck with this critter. Take a minute and drop a comment as to what your fiendish plans are for this build.

~Now for something completely different . . .

We're sure everone has dropped into their local games store to pick up cards . . .BUT . . .

What if you are in a hurry to catch a train and know that you have the next several hours to kill. Instead of catching up on some sleep, you and your MTG buddy should drop some coins into this vending machine on the train platform. This machine is found at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof trainstation and in our opinion a very cool idea.

6 comments:

I love how dedicated you are to breaking Sigil Captain! This deck has me wondering if we might see the return of a viable black/green aggro elves deck. Even just a splash of black in Eldrazi Green would allow you to play Maelstrom Pulse to wreck the mirror.

Joraga is a great card no doubt! I have been seeing a lot of forums saying the same topic on how it is subject to removal. There is a lot of removal geared towards creatures in standard, but the problem is that yes this going in Eldrazi OBVIOUSLY... so thought it lies under the 'subject to removal' category... so does just about every other creature in Eldrazi.I am really excited for Joraga. I can see him being a staple in decks.

Sigil Captain is NOT useless, even if you kick Joraga Warcaller. He still enters play as a 1/1, and will trigger Sigil Captain's ability (which hits the stack and actually resolves first), THEN receive any additional +1/+1 counters from being kicked. Similar to being able to cast Punishing Fire at a TukTuk Grunts and kill it before it recieves it's own +1/+1 counter.

It says Joraga Warcaller enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked.That means that it enters the battle with the counters on it.So Sigil Captain is useless if kicked.But you don't have to pay the kicker and it will get the +2+2 from Sigil Captain. Then you can use Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Ajani Goldmane and that's a 5/5 for 1 mana that gives other elves +4+4. Neat combo.

I'd prefer to stick to mono green myself making Quest for the Gemblades, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Blade of the Bloodchief my options.

I'm glad that Canopy Cover is coming out for the Opponent Shroud and evasion. Still being able to add counters is a bonus and making it harder to block means you can use it aggressively.